By Canute Tangwa
No Catholic prelate, in Cameroon, since the late Bishop Albert Ndongmo, has been both loved and loathed like Christian Cardinal Tumi.
He was loved and venerated by those who looked up to him as a moral authority, a peace crusader, a human rights defender and a champion of free thought and speech; loathed and dreaded by those who saw him as an impediment to their Machiavellian and sinister designs to despoil and emasculate the masses and the downtrodden, to stifle free thought and to bayonet free speech.
The cleric was held in awe by fence-sitters, buccaneers, profiteers and tribal man Fridays since he was well above their mercantile and clannish schemes.
Within the academy, the university, he cautioned freshmen and graduates at the University of Buea on 21 December 1998 to defend the truth irrespective of the circumstances. It was a landmark discourse that expounded on ontological truth, ‘defined as the conformity of objective reality with its divine ideal, with its corresponding idea in the mind of the creator,’ which, put simply, is the correlation between what you think and say. Otherwise, it is a lie!
Within the purview of his pastoral calling, his political theology, at variance with liberation theology, based on the virtues of fortitude, temperance and justice as well as Catholic dogmas (Vatican II, Social Teachings of the Church), universal declaration of human rights, the Augustinian just war theory coupled with his Bishopric motto (Lord I have Come To Do Your Will) was bound to clash with State authorities and the corrupt-bankrupt banditti.
As a moral authority, he shot the first salvo that brought in its stead ‘suspicion, surveillance and slander’ from the State when he was appointed Rector of the Major Seminary in Bambui in 1973 by Monsignor Paul Verdzekov, Bishop of Bamenda who ‘invited him to start an ecumenical group to study the bible and seek guidance on political changes that plagued the country. In response, Tumi and a group of Christian intellectuals and lay leaders formed The Christian Study Group (CSG) to analyse socio-political events in our country in the light of the Gospel of Christ.’
The immediate upshot of their reflection was the publication of a pastoral letter on the Fight Against Corruption by the Bishops of Buea and Bamenda, which as Elias Kifon Bongmba avers, ‘(constituted) a detailed and unusually frank discussion of the crisis of corruption in Cameroon that appealed to all Christians to examine their conscience and fight corruption. This document, which remains one of the boldest pastoral letters in Cameroon’s ecclesiastical history, called on Christians to be the light of the world, in a context where corruption had already infected all sectors of the country.’
In reaction, the then Minister for Territorial Administration instructed Governor David Abouem A Tchoyi to arrest members of the CSG following the presentation of the contents of the pastoral letter at a public forum in Bamenda. History records that Abouem A Tchoyi refused to arrest members of the group on the grounds that they did not perturb public order!
As Bishop of Yagoua (1979) and later Archbishop of Garoua, he was often on a collision course with State and public authorities. At Yagoua, his first pastoral letter ‘urging Christians to remain strong in their faith in Christ’ did not go down well with Governor Ousmane Mey who ‘summoned Tumi to a meeting…and accused Tumi of engaging in subversive activities and stated that Tumi could be sent to jail like Monsignor Albert Ndongmo.’
There was no respite with the appointment of Fon Fosi Yakum Ntaw as Governor of the North. When the Governor accused ‘the Catholic Church of subversive activities because the church was building chapels without the permission of the state − a reference to a 1928 colonial law that required all groups, including religious groups, to get state permissions before they constructed any properties,’ Tumi hit back stating that ‘Northern Cameroon is not predominantly Muslim. There are Christian churches in the region and at the time there were two other Catholic bishops in Northern Cameroon, who themselves were indigenes.’
Reacting to the Governor’s ‘charge that Catholics were constructing church buildings without permission, Tumi argued that the government ought to congratulate the Catholic Church for its social services to the people. He also told the governor that Muslims were building mosques without permission. But the governor argued that Islam was a traditional religion and did not need permission to build. Tumi countered that the state of Cameroon was a secular state and the government could not favor one religion over the others.’
As two-term president of the Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (1985 and 1990), public authorities were always nervous, vilified the prelate and saw his hand in every communique or pastoral letter critizing poor government economic policies and actions published by the Episcopal Conference under his tenure.
Suffice to note that the government lobbied hard for him not to be elected a second time as president of the episcopal conference but the bishops stood their ground. The State then unleashed a fiery media campaign against the prelate through CRTV that posted journalists to the North according to Robert Abunaw ‘to frustrate the cardinal media wise.’ The former Director of Radio, Antoine Marie Ngono holds that CRTV contributed greatly in the demonization of the prelate…fortunately it belatedly changed course.
Pope John Paul II ‘appointed him to the College of Cardinals and he was consecrated Cardinal on 28 June 1988 in Rome.’ He was received with a lot of pomp by the Christian community, Cameroonians in general and the government. The Head of State dispatched a presidential jet to pick up the cardinal from Rome to Yaounde and then ferried him to Garoua. The President offered him a Mercedes Benz.
However, when the supreme pontiff transferred him from Garoua to Douala in 1991 just when the floodgates of multiparty democracy were opened in Cameroon, the government became jittery for he was seen within power circles in Yaounde as a spiritual guide of the opposition. Indeed, he came on hard on the government for violently attacking the launching of the Social Democratic Party in 1992 and made it clear that it was the constitutional and legitimate right of any Cameroonian to form a political party.
Government fears were apparently ‘confirmed’ when the opposition swept almost all seats in local elections in Douala. This is the more so because as Kifon Bongmba posits, ‘the Catholic Bishop’s Conference had written a letter to all the Christians in Cameroon in preparation for that election and he, Tumi, read it openly in the Cathedral in Douala.’
His stance on issues like the use of condoms was quite controversial but revolutionary within the Catholic Church. In order to curb the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, he advocated the limited use of condoms by couples! However, he did toe the line regarding Catholic teaching on abortion and homosexuality. In short, he was pro-life and pro-family in the catholic sense of the word.
As a defender of human rights, he railed at the extra judicial and targeted killings of ordinary Cameroonians by the operational command put in place by the State to fight organized crime, armed robbery and banditry in Douala from 1999 to 2000 following the killing of a French butcher by armed robbers.
It came to a head when nine persons were picked up arbitrarily in the neighbourhood of Bepanda and the operational unit could not account for their whereabouts. The cardinal called for the dismantling of the unit. He also wrote a letter to armed robbers and men of the underworld urging them to change their ways. For his efforts in the defense of human rights in Cameroon, he was awarded the Sergio de Mello Human Rights Prize on 27 May 2005.
As a champion of free speech and thought, he set up Radio Veritas and the Catholic printing press, MACACOS. However, these came at a prize because certain authorities in Yaounde including some members of his entourage did everything to frustrate the creation of these structures.
Interviews granted by the cleric to local and international media were often critical of government policies and actions relating to the economy, conduct of elections, governance, security, freedom of expression, tribalism, marginalization (particularly the Anglophone minority) and this often drew the ire of State authorities who accused the prelate of having presidential ambitions and of being anti-patriotic amongst other accusations. The cardinal often responded via open letters to the State authorities that were published in local papers. The ping pong between the cardinal and public authorities via local media became a recurring decimal.
As a peace crusader, the cardinal together with other religious leaders called for an Anglophone Conference in order to address the Anglophone problem in Cameroon but was frustrated by the government and local lackeys due to suspicion. The team produced a four-hundred-page document on the crisis that was forwarded to the presidency but the latter responded by setting the Grand National Dialogue, which did not deter the cardinal from attending and proffering solutions to the crisis. For his pains he was abducted by separatists and later released.
Cardinal Christian Tumi was an emblematic personality with many facets. He was often misunderstood. He was quite pragmatic and tolerant but could also be dogmatic to a fault. He was a pastor of souls who he did not lose sight of the fact that ‘though man cannot live by bread alone he cannot equally do without it.’ His works, spiritual and physical, bear witness to a ‘man who saw tomorrow.’
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